Partners for 10 years
“Returning to Kathmandu after 20 years, the city was quite unrecognisable but the warmth and welcome from the Nepali people was as wonderful as ever, and never more so than when Paul Chandler (Traidcraft CEO) and I visited Get Paper Industry (GPI) in May.
Traidcraft and GPI have been partners for 10 years now, working together to develop some of our fantastic handmade paper gift wrap and more recently the beautiful and colourful paper garlands. It was a real pleasure for Paul and me to spend the day with GPI’s founder Milan Dev Bhattarai and his team at their workshop on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
On arrival we were greeted with garlands and flowers by the 90 cooperative members, we then had a fascinating tour around the premises and saw all the different stages of production. GPI make their own paper on site using a variety of materials. The day we visited the base of the pulp was white cotton vests!… waste from a local garment factory.
After several hours of beating, mixing and dying to the required colour, bamboo silk screen frames are used to lift the pulp and form the sheets of paper. These are then pressed and transferred to tin plates for drying in the sun.
The artisans at GPI then use the paper to create a whole range of products. A specialism is silk screen printing. We saw Traidcraft’s cute new elephant design skilfully re-created ready for printing sheets of gift wrap (watch out for it in Spring!).
'Send your daughter to school'
But, like many of our partners, GPI is about so much more than lovely products. As well as donating a percentage of their turnover to their sister charity GWP, GPI also fund their own local community initiatives. After a delicious Nepali lunch Paul and I visited the school just up the hill from the workshops.
Built and supported by GPI, the school provides classes for the young children of coop members and others in the local community with a special focus on girls as part of a ‘send your daughter to school’ campaign.
After the school visit the children joined us as we continued further up the hill to plant some trees, again all part of their focus on improving the lives of those in the community As always, visits such as this are a humbling experience, and one that reminds me why working with organisations like GPI is so important.
One amazing fact we discovered on our trip is the importance of the fair trade sector to Nepal. Sandwiched between two trade giants, China and India, Nepal struggles to compete and official exports are very low at approximately US$800m.
To think that over US$3m of that comprises fair trade crafts is quite staggering and testament to the amazing resourcefulness and resilience of people like Milan and his team.” - Nicky Robinson, Head of Development- Non Food.
2010 Traidcraft | Fighting poverty through trade